This is the blog of Eco-Vista | Brent Stephenson, a wildlife photographer, guide, and birder based near Napier, New Zealand. His wildlife, landscape, and people images can be discovered at his portfolio website.

Monday, 7 November 2011

Lovin' Kaiks

We headed off with the wind still pretty strong from the
south-west, and with a little time up our sleeves before the pelagic started
headed for the Seal colony. We checked
out the loafing seals and there were a few ruddy turnstone and even a couple of
godwit on the rocky platforms. We could
see hundreds of Hutton’s shearwaters streaming past at sea, and even one or two
albatross...

A quick scenic stop (unbelievable on a birding tour!) at the
Lookout, and then down to South Bay to meet Gazza our skipper and jump on the
boat. We were in one of the larger
boats, and the wind was still honking, but we hadn’t even hardly got out of the
South Bay harbour and there were albatross and Cape petrels around us. We headed out into the wind and it wasn’t
actually too bad, with the masses of birds making up for it. We got a little way out and one of the local fishing
boats was working with an absolute swarm behind it, so we headed towards that
and started chumming. There were birds
everywhere and it was truly one of the best Kaikoura pelagics! At one stage as the fishing boat went past
there were literally 50+ Westland petrels behind it. Many of the birds came over to us, and Gazza
stayed at the helm and guided the boat slowly into the swell, and then we
turned and motored with the swell slowly so the light was in the right
direction. We had both Northern and
Southern Royal albatrosses, at least 20+ New Zealand wandering, mostly Northern
giant petrels, but at least one very hungry Southern Royal, and good numbers of
Salvin’s albatrosses. Westland petrels were
picked amongst for the odd white-chinned which ended up showing really well,
and although it didn’t show particularly well we had a very late in the season
Antarctic fulmar. Surprisingly there
were also a lot of sooty shearwaters, with 20+ birds.

The photographers were clicking away and we had an
incredible time. Despite the lively
conditions, nobody was sick...there were too many birds to keep everyone
occupied! We headed along to another
point on the canyon edge and chummed a bit longer, with a similar assemblage of
birds. Just magic stuff. We then headed in towards Barney’s Rock and
picked up good numbers of Hutton’s shearwaters, and as we headed over there an
Arctic skua showed itself well. We also
had a couple of dusky dolphins head past us, and as we headed back for the
marina a small pod of Hector’s dolphins showed really well – a nice finale to
the trip.

We arrived back into port and then had a great lunch at the
Encounter Cafe – great food thanks guys!
After lunch it was free time, an opportunity to take a break, check
email, get some washing done, etc. Myself
and Steve Wood decided to head back out on the water for the afternoon trip,
with the wind having dropped it really was like another different day on the
water. Numbers of birds in general had
dropped, but we still had some great photo opportunities and picked up a young
black-browed albatross and grey-faced petrel
that hadn’t been seen during the morning. We also had massive flocks of feeding Hutton’s
shearwaters just off the peninsula which was fantastic.

Dinner was at a local restaurant, and then an early night
(for some!) before another big day.